lacking power, or just doing it wrong?

[spotonjon]

hi chaps,

I bought myself a hand held flock machine, its 12V battery powered but it doesnt seem to be enough power. i say this bacause i watched a video from DCA on there hand held unit which shows the flock coming from the hooper at a fast rate, mine doesnt even come out at half the pace

i was using a car battery 60ah but didnt seem powerful enough so found a lorry/Truck battery 175ah but seem to be getting the same result.

It is a power issue i have? or am i doing something wrong? im not sure if im earhting it correct. im using a peace of stainless steel sheet and earthing that, putting the item on top and going for it.?

any help would be apprechated

[Ray (Flock Man)]

A long while back my friend Gary bought a GrassMaster flocking unit and we tried like hell to get a good tight coverage on our old GIjOE’s , but while we could shake out a nice model train scale grassy field we could never get enough even coverage on a GIjOE head. The unit did what it was intended to do, but we didn't have much luck with what we wanted it to do.

We could do a little spot patching, but not much more. Later I learned how to make a hand held unit and though it worked much better- Why I really don’t know- it may be because the 12 volts came from a power supply, but I fail to see that being a factor. 12 volts is 12 volts (and the PSU was like 5 milliamps or less). Soon after the 12 VDC units were sold out and I made them out of 120VAC input units. The hand helds still acted the same as the 12VDC units – meaning lots of shaking of the unit and moving of the piece around to get a good coverage.

By now I had watched a video of a flower being dipped in to glue and hung in a cabinet flocker, plus I watched a fellow collector use a cabinet flocker to reflock a GIjOE head. At this time we worked on rethinking our whole concepts and the cabinet/tray type unit came to be. With this we were able to thickly coat a GIjOE head with as little as 5kV. The units I use now can go much higher, but I rarely need to go higher than 8kV.

The point I guess I’m trying to make is- the standard Commercial Handheld models- (like a DCA device) would run at 70kV output. The reason for such a high output would be for best results on a wide range of flocking projects.

Yes the better the grounding = better flocking. Also know with a lesser output handheld you will have to work a bit harder. I’ve seen guys use them and use them very well. I can’t remember off hand who, but I watched a short video of a guy using a GrassFlocker to coat a dash, but I do remember he worked very very fast and seemed to be moving around the Dashboard like he was putting out a fire. Others use handhelds with great results on GIjOE.

Now what I wonder has your unit shorted out. It can happen very easy when a small piece of flock fiber gets into the connections and screws everything up. At one time I thought one of my Cabinet units burnt out because it was doing nothing at all. I later found that flock fibers somehow got under some taped wires just enough to mess the static charge up. I cleaned it and retaped/sealed everything and it worked fine again.
If you place some fibers on the ground plate and move the unit over them you should see them stand up, move around or even jump. If not there may be a short somewhere.
Will the unit ever Jump like a DCA unit? No, 70kV usually makes up for any short falls or mistakes.

Now if the unit is a 12 volt in and 30kV thru 100kV and you’re getting a weak result I’d look for shorts or popped fuses, etc.
IF the unit is a 12 VDC in and 15kV or less you may be limited in what you can flock without using plenty of arm shaking.

I hope this helps.

[spotonjon]

Wow wasn't expecting quite a response, well to start with I'm totaly new in the whole flocking thing, so experimenting on different items to flock. Have tried a few interior car plastics but as you said above has to shake the unit like mad, but feel the flock sat very flat and not stood on end.

The unit I've got is a home made thing, so I took it apart as you suggested, couldn't find much everything looked to be in place. I did find the ion generator that's powering it, but again not sure if it's a ideal? No good with the KV outputs. As said I'm using a massive 12v 170Ah battery

This is what I found
secure.oatleyelectronics.com//product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=915&osCsid=959ff7c8b837acb60599f281a54d5928

[Ray (Flock Man)]

So (going by the link) from a 12VDC source it'll run at 15kV. So it should kick ass. 15kV is 15,000 volts. That's a pretty good zap to move (I’m guessing) .030 fibers around… hell even 6 mm fibers for that matter.
To test the unit a bit I would get a piece of cardboard and glue it up with white glue (a school glue like elmers). I’d coat it good and even and then attach the ground clip to the cardboard, making sure it has good contact to the glue. I’d then do a test run. It should have no problem coating a good size piece that is well grounded.
If it fails then something is wrong. IF it works fine- then there may be issues with the other pieces you’re trying to flock.
I say this because not long ago I worked on some samples and even at 70 kV the sample pieces seemed to repel the flock. After a ton of effort and a few modifications, I was able to flock one piece, but the end result looked basically as if I had used a puffer bottle. In the end I had to return the samples unflocked and without a valid reason as to why I couldn’t get the job done.
Maybe after a month of steady testing and a rework of my whole setup I could do it, but then again I worried it could fail and I would have wasted even more of the clients time- not to mention my own.
I bothered me so much I started to look into purchasing a commercial unit. One that had a Positive Ion output because of a gut feeling I still have as to why it all failed. I’m thinking that the sample pieces had a negative charge to them- like say, a random plastic container would have so, my guess is that using a Negative Ion charge on something already with a negative charge to it created a null charge. With no way to really know for sure, that’s the story I’m sticking to in order to stop it from bugging me.
At any rate, I came to my senses and scrapped the project before it became a quest. I just can’t afford anymore crusades in flocking. At this point I just need to stick to what I know and what works for me. Places like Donjer or other Flock coaters can do the non-GIjOE stuff. This I say only because of my own lack of skill on projects outside the Joe realm. What I do know is coating a toy with a teaspoon of flock is a much easier task than coating a car dashboard so, I won’t pretend that they are even in the same ballpark.